Habit tracker

Habit tracker: what it is and how to use it

A habit tracker is a simple record of the days you did something you want to do regularly. You tick each day you do it, and the row of ticks shows how steady you have been. This one is free, runs in your browser and keeps your ticks on your own device.

What the research says about forming a habit

The common claim that a habit takes 21 days traces back to the surgeon Maxwell Maltz, who wrote in Psycho-Cybernetics (1960) that it takes "a minimum of about 21 days" for an old mental image to dissolve. He was describing what he had noticed, not reporting a study.

In a 2010 study by Phillippa Lally and colleagues, the time to reach near-full automaticity ranged from 18 to 254 days, and missing a single day did not derail it; a 2024 review reports the median as 66. So a tracker is a way to keep going for weeks or months, not a 21-day countdown.

Tying the new habit to a fixed cue, in the form "after I do X, I will do Y", is one of the better-supported ideas: reviews of these if-then plans find a real effect, though it is small once publication bias is allowed for. The habit tracker has a box for that cue. More in our Atomic Habits summary.

How to use it

1. Press Add habit, give it a short name ("Read a few pages") and, if you like, the cue it follows ("After I pour my morning coffee").
2. Pick when you usually do it: morning, any time or evening.
3. Each day you do it, tick today's square on its card. You can tick the last seven days too, if you forgot.
4. Watch the streak count and the 20-week grid. A missed day is not a reset, just pick it up again the next day.
5. Download your ticks now and then: they live only in this browser.

An example

Say you want to read more. Add "Read a few pages" with the cue "After I pour my morning coffee". Keep the book next to the kettle, tick the square when you have read, and after a few weeks the grid shows which days it held and which days it slipped.